This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

New university architecture is open by design: Hume

If architecture has anything to teach us, the city’s campuses might well be the best place these days to learn its lessons.

New buildings at Ryerson University and the University of Toronto bring unprecedented levels of urbanity to their students’ lives as well as that of the city. They also embody the promise of inclusivity of which Toronto — by its own admission the most diverse city in the world — is so proud.

The details of size, scale, transparency and materials express our civic desire for a community that is fully accessible, egalitarian and open to all. One way or another, this hope is at the heart of every effort to make Toronto a better city.

Though neither structure is complete, both are already landmarks, most obviously Ryerson’s new centre. Because of its location at the busy downtown corner of Yonge and Gould, it has been a landmark ever since the exterior glazing first went up some months ago. The irregularly shaped building is clad in fritted glass panels decorated with geometric abstract patterns reminiscent of mid-century modernism.

Article Continued Below

Designed by acclaimed Norwegian architectural firm Snohetta, best known for the Alexandria Library and Oslo Opera House, with Toronto’s Zeidler Partnership, the building is hard — no, impossible — to ignore. It also feels welcoming to visitors as well as students. A wide stairwell leads from a small plaza on Yonge up to a large indoor space that reaches several storeys high.

It’s still all concrete, noise and dust, but this is an interior intended for public purposes in addition to scholarly pursuits. A café will occupy one section of the lobby; the rest, the “amphitheatre,” will have raked seating around the edges and big views upwards. Along Yonge at street level there will be the usual retail.

Throughout the centre the emphasis is on flexibility; spaces can be reconfigured to accommodate individuals and groups. Stairwells do double duty as seating areas and the feel throughout is informal, though clearly organized.

The obvious departure from traditional academic architecture gives the sense here that education is a shared experience if not a group activity. The idea of the lone scholar, sitting quietly in a carrel, has expanded to encompass a more communal approach.

The building takes its cues from its context as much as its program. As much as anything, this is Ryerson’s long awaited Yonge Street debut, its new face, one no one will forget. The message is simple: Come in.

Farther north, at Bloor and Devonshire Place across the road from Varsity Stadium, the Goldring Centre is a palace of sweat transformed into a unabashedly elegant glass box that would serve nicely as an art gallery, a cultural facility of some sort, or perhaps a theatre. Like the Ryerson addition, it turns the awkward necessities of such places into occasions for celebration.

Designed by Vancouver’s ever-brilliant Patkau Architects (Harbourfront School, Fort York Visitors Centre) and Toronto’s always innovative MJM Architects, Goldring is a big building on a small site. The only way to accommodate the regulation-size basketball court was to put it below street level. The top floors actually hang above the multi-level basement suspended from a bridge-like structure that spans the property. In this way, columns have been eliminated and glass walls added to let in the natural light that brings these potentially deadly subterranean spaces to life.

“The project interested me because it’s an important community building,” says John Patkau, “an important cultural building. Looking in/looking out is the most energizing element of the project. The incongruity of elements – a weight-lifting room beside another with an MRI scanner – made it very challenging. But public projects such as this have always been the focus of our practice.”

From an urbanistic point of view, the two schemes are not just elements within the city, but also metaphors for it. The big idea behind both is one of connectedness and seamlessness, inclusivity and equality. Just as they allow the city to become part of the campus; they allow the campus to expand into the larger city.

In this way, they help change the campus — and the city — from a collection of (admittedly beautiful) architectural artifacts into a series of spaces. Of course, none of this is entirely new; the 2005 Terrence Donnelly Centre on College St. (Behnisch Architects and architectsAlliance) is actually an open pedestrian link between street and campus.

George Brown College has also played a role in the creation of the new university architecture, most notably at its 2009 School of Hospitality on Richmond St. E. The architects, Kearns Mancini, neatly reversed the traditional order of things; what was opaque now became transparent, and vice-versa. Masonry walls turned into glass. Classrooms, shut off behind closed doors, became an extension of the city. Students became performers in the unfolding urban pageant. What had been invisible could now be seen.

The larger message is clear; the city is richer — and with it our lives — when it engages everyone. Though Toronto is universally lauded as a city of tolerance and multiculturalism, it is divided into a number of discrete ethnic neighbourhoods – Little India, Little Portugal, Little Italy, Chinatown and so on.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this, but these buildings suggest there can also be spaces whose essential quality is their publicness. Transparency, the great virtue of modern times, can be architectural as well as financial and political. If what we see is what we get, that’s as good a place to start as any.

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com